sat motor help

nistleboy · 02-07-2008

hi all
been trying to put up a motorised dish and well lost.my Latitude: 54.710°and Longitude: -6.186° i set my motor to 54 in lat the angle of dish as 24 .when i put my settings in usals i put 54.71 north as lat and 00.6 west as long cant seem to find a minus button so put in the two 00.i have the sat pointing to true south i have tried to get thor and the sat moves to close to wall and seems to be at an odd angle. when i looked at dish pointer thor is slightly ahead of me close to true south.the two things i am thinking when i point the dish at true south hoe does the rec know this .i was going to put in astra 1 which i have tried through dish pointer let the motor move to it and try and correct it by hand. also no matter what i do i get level synal 88 and quality is 20to 22 percent any ideas please.there is no houses in front of me just a field i have the dish pointing 45 deg of the pole but every thing is straight pointing true s.please help i really dont know what else to do.
thanks for reading.

**satelliteman** · 02-07-2008

There is no minus, it's W for West in the motor menu.

Forget setting up on Thor as this is not your reference satellite.

Enter you longitude & latitude in to USALS software and send motor to 5W. Align motor for a signal there.

See set up guide in signature

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

thanks sat man for quick reply , im a bit pussled by There is no minus, it's W for West in the motor menu. i put my lat and long in usals and leave long as-06.18 w will mean minus.i think i have the sat well flush.is this what i do point sat to true south witch i know then enter 5w then save this and try align dish to this and use meter to get best signal.sorry for all the questions spent all day on this and still no signal.the level sygnal is 80+ and the quality is 20+thanks for any help.

**satelliteman** · 03-07-2008

> With dish on centre of motor shaft, aim the dish together with the motor as one to a rough South position. Ensure you have the motor scale bracket set to your latitude or Elevation.
> Input your longitude & Latitude in the motor menu.
> In the motor menu, send the dish to 5W or just select a channel on 5W.
> The dish will move to the calculated 5W position.
> When the dish reaches it's position, you then align the dish to 5W with only adjusting the motor and the dish as one and the dish declination (elevation).
> When happy, tighten up and test system.

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

hi satman
this is what i did yesterday i set motor to 55 my lat is 54.7,set angle of dish to 24 all pointing tru south the motor working fine. when the motor is turning the dish it does not stay straight it moves like in an arc like a rainbow.when i got motor the arm of the motor was already attached maybe this is prob not sure.going to take down everything and start again today and make sure pole is 100% flush the pole does not come with two brackets it is u shape and very strong not like the sky poles.hope this day of is going to be a good one.
ps thanks sat man

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

hi satman
i found astra today manually ,every time i point dish south and tell it to go 5w the motor turns the dish at nearly a right angle when i have motor at 0 it should only move a bit but it turns dish to right angle. i think my usals im puttin in are wrong.i put in lat which is 54.7n and long as 06.1w i cant see what im doing wrong.

**rolfw** · 03-07-2008

Try setting it without USALS, can you take a picture of the USALS screen?

**satelliteman** · 03-07-2008

Your Longitude & latitude look fine.
What motor is it?
Maybe re-set the motor and start again from the guides & tutorials.
Some pictures of your motor menu screen and dish set up would be of some help.
Have you done exactly what I suggested in post #4

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

thanks satman and rolf.
the motor is a technomate 2200 and the dish is 88cm with a tech 5400 ci.i reset motor today with a thin allen key and when i send it to 5w it seems to move a complete right angle when thor should only be a couple of clicks away.i manually set dish to astra sat today with one of those sat pointers and saved it as astra then when i turned sat off and on it went looking for astra and moved a complete right angle and no pic. now i have it set to astra and in settings turned motor off. this is for my mum as was fed up with her getting ripped of with sky.i was so temted to ring a guy to get him to do it but i wont let it beat me. going to upload some pics guys if i can thanks very much for your help even if i dont get this.
ps yes sat man tried all in post 4
cheers david

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

hi guys
its not letting me copy and paste pictures

**bigtee** · 03-07-2008

Can I suggest a little trick?

Assuming that the sat you have is Astra 2 (i.e. the one with UK TV), then do the following:

1. Leave the dish on Astra 2
2. Turn off receiver and unplug
3. At the back of receiver only, remove the LNB cable
4. Plug and turn back receiver on (i.e.) without LNB cable but still connected to TV
5. Select USALS and enter/make sure your coordinates are rightly entered
6. Use remote to ask receiver to go to Astra 2 (to make sure the receiver does go to Astra 2, you may first send it to another satellite and then send it to Astra 2).
7. Turn off receiver and unplug
8. Reconnect LNB cable to receiver
9. Turn on receiver
10. Watch Astra 2
11. Try sending receiver to other satellites
12. Fine tune dish alignment at some point (if necessary).

**Robbo71** · 03-07-2008

Originally Posted by nistleboy

hi guys
its not letting me copy and paste pictures

To load pictures to the forum, you need to scroll down a bit from the box where you type stuff and find manage attachments, from there you can upload them.

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

http://www.satellites.co.uk/satellit...5-dsc00296.jpg

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

Hi guys

This is the only pic i have at the min but i will send another one of the usals screen tomorrow. Big Tee, when i manually got astra today, i had to set angle of dish to 15.0 degrees when it is supposed to be at 22.0 degrees for motor, that is why i think it wouldnt get the arc right to pick up the rest of the satellites. I cant understand why it sends the motor when i have the motor set to zero and it goes all the way to west when i am wanting it to find 5west which is my true south.

Thanks again for all your help.

**bigtee** · 03-07-2008

Yep, it may indeed not get the arc right which is why I said to fine tune alignment as necessary; but I think it will cure the problem of the motor not knowing where it is if you are using USALS. This is because after following that procedure, the next time you send the motor to another sat, it will calculate that position from 28e.

nistleboy · 03-07-2008

thanks big tee i will try this tomorrow and hopefully it will work for me. Your recommendation sounds very sensible.

Thanks for helping sat man, rolf, robbo and big tee.

Will let you know how i get on tomorrow

**Topper** · 04-07-2008

Originally Posted by nistleboy

Hi guys
. Big Tee, when i manually got astra today, i had to set angle of dish to 15.0 degrees when it is supposed to be at 22.0 degrees for motor, that is why i think it wouldn't get the arc right to pick up the rest of the satellites.

You are showing a picture which says Astra 1, that is at 19 degrees East, but bigtee is talking about Astra 2 at 28 Degrees East I may be wrong but I think you are getting confused between the two.

**satelliteman** · 04-07-2008

Originally Posted by nistleboy

i was so tempted to ring a guy to get him to do it but i wont let it beat me.

Keep at it nistleboy and don't give up

This will be something very obvious for sure. You could do the Astra set up then back to 5W but from zero the motor only has a small movement to travel. It's up to you

I will be on and off most of the day so look forward to your pictures of the USALS screen.

Also post a picture of your dish /motor on 'ZERO' position so I can see. This can be achieved by 'goto reference' in motor menu.

Paul
Satman

**bigtee** · 04-07-2008

Originally Posted by Topper

You are showing a picture which says Astra 1, that is at 19 degrees East, but bigtee is talking about Astra 2 at 28 Degrees East I may be wrong but I think you are getting confused between the two.

Sorry, I didn't realise OP was on Astra 1. Good thing is that if following the suggested procedure to at least get motor bearing right, then all that is necessary is to use Astra 1 instead of Astra 2 that I mentioned in earlier post. Good luck anyhow.

**compufunk** · 04-07-2008

I'm a bit wet behind the ears in this area, but could it be a problem with some reference file/setting/calculation in the receiver? Seems strange that the motor is sent all the way west for thor,

I thought that all the DiSEqC 1.3 settings/calculations were held/calculated in the receiver.

Have you tried sending the motor to any other sats to see how far it turns, say Hotbird on 13c East?

nistleboy · 04-07-2008

hi all

I have tried what Big Tee said about pointing to astra and it was finding astra now and again. and then i manually pointed it to true south so it would think it was at south. Then i told it to go to astra and the satellite started to move west instead of south east, so i am really starting to think i have a faulty receiver .

Ps Compufunk i think you could be right i really dont understand. When i tell it to go 5w and have it saved at 5w and then tell it to go astra its moving right instead of left.

Thanks everyone

**rolfw** · 04-07-2008

Do a factory reset on the receiver, then start from scratch on the reference satellite.

**satelliteman** · 04-07-2008

...........Also, take a few pictures of the USALS screen and the dish when on ZERO position. There may be something obvious

nistleboy · 04-07-2008

hi guys
sorry was away was tryint to sort out sat rec been at this for three days now plus my day job.hi satman took a pic of usals ill upload soon and rolf i did factory reset now around 5 times i thought that would do the trick but it keeps moving totally west as if it thinks it is pointing a north .big tee i thought your idea was the ticket it stayed on astra then then when i sent it to hell sat witch took the dish completly west to nearly the end of motor .i took the motor of today and manually set it to 40 deg left of motor and im getting astr 1 then i moved it to 35 deg and had astra and bad1 and 5 other sats so i think the dish is close to arc. going to fine tune tom least i can get loads of sats even if i have to climb a ladder lol.topper the pic i had last night was a pic i just had on camera,sorry mate. i rang the guy i bought it of and some techmate guy is going to ring me tom, i hope.i have learnt so much in the past few days i think if i had a good sat rec this wouldnt of been to hard .thanks guys so much i do believe i will get there in the end.

nistleboy · 04-07-2008

some pics guyshttp://www.satellites.co.uk/satellit...7-dsc00299.jpg

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